Kai Lenny, Casper Steinfath and Bernd Roediger vs Dragon Boat

[Off-Shore]

Kai Lenny, Casper Steinfath and Bernd Roediger are visiting Hong Kong for our 2nd International SUP Championship on Sunday http://www.hksupba.com/2ndhkintchamp and the organisers managed to stage 3 races for them yesterday against the fastest Dragon Boat team in Hong Kong: the Fire Dept.

1. 200m vs 20 Man Dragon boat
2. 200m vs 10 Man Dragon boat
3. 400m vs 20 Man Dragon boat with one 180 deg buoy turn at 200m mark

Guess who won?

[Night Wing]

Nice set of photos.

[Off-Shore]

Here's the vid of the start of the 400 meter in normal speed and slo-mo..

https://youtu.be/K-lI7DctIGQ

[PonoBill]

My money would be on the dragon boat. 50 feet of waterline and all those paddles, should smoke the SUPs.

[DavidJohn]

My money would be on the dragon boat. 50 feet of waterline and all those paddles, should smoke the SUPs.

Until they have to do a buoy turn.. 

[Area 10]

Put all three SUPers together on a 25ft board and you'd have a fairer fight. When I tried tandem SUPing I was shocked at how much faster two people are than one - as long as you work together, that is...

[Night Wing]

I would also go with the Dragon Boat for the win because of the longer water line (and lots more paddlers in the boat).

Wished that video would have been longer in length time wise too.

[PonoBill]

A good steersman in an OC6 can turn the boat in its own length. I imagine dragon boats can do that too.  A little kahi in the front, big poke in the rear. Hmmm. that sounds vaguely sexual.

[Off-Shore]

Here is a more detailed vid showing the preamble and the 3 races. Not such good footage from the headmounted GoPro though and zooming in to the footage with stabilisation doesn't work so well.. DJ should have been here! 

https://youtu.be/gMPJqDHBqz0

The results were as follows:-

1. 200m vs 20 Man Dragon boat: Winner: Dragon Boat
2. 200m vs 10 Man Dragon boat: Winner: Dragon Boat
3. 400m vs 20 Man Dragon boat with one 180 deg buoy turn at 200m mark: Winner (by just one yard / meter over Kai Lenny): Dragon Boat

Amazing to see, and I think with practice the 400m with buoy turn would have been won by Kai

[PonoBill]

Wow, that dragon boat turns like a barge. Im also surprised to see the steersman doesn't paddle, and the steering oar is in the water all the time. And the stroke doesn't paddle. Ive gotta think an oc6 would toast them, especially an unlimited boat (light).

[Off-Shore]

They don't often do turns in Dragon Boat racing here, although I'm told they do in Australia... Yes, OC6 vs Dragon Boat would be an interesting race. Let me see if I can set that up here..

Here is the official vid showing the last race with the buoy turn. You can see how close it was at the end..

https://youtu.be/zdTeKm15znw

[Area 10]

Well, the moral victory is definitely with the SUPs here. A tandem SUP would have smoked that dragon boat.

It's interesting to see that although Caspar was trailing the other two on his Maliko (the others were on Javelins that would be a more obvious choice for those conditions, I'd have thought), he wasn't that far behind. Maybe if the race had been longer the gap would have steadily widened. And maybe Caspar was benefitting from the Maliko being good for drafting (I don't know if it is, I'm just guessing). But equally, maybe the Maliko has a respectable flat water pace for a "planing hull" type board. Has anyone tried a Maliko in flat water, back to back with a displacement nose board of similar width?

[Off-Shore]

Area. Totally agree. From this vid, it looks like a dead heat to me or even that Kai won!

Casper was the first SUP over the line in the first 200m race on a Javelin. Since they only had these three 2017 boards with them on this day, they swapped around. You can see in this, the third race, Casper on the Maliko seems to be sort of easing off 1/2 way down the first leg and and letting Kai go first to the buoy.  It was brutally hot (33 deg C and 100% humidity and zero wind) so these conditions were also not exactly ideal..

[zachhandler]

I looked up dragon boat world records. 200m record is 40 seconds, which is 11.2 mph average. I think the sup 200m record is 47 seconds by danny ching, but that is with a rolling start, and he is the only one in the world under 50 seconds. Rolling start,  as an aside, is an idiotic way to structure a race. But that is a different subject. Bottom line is that dragon boats are simply much faster than SUP so the results are no surprise.

[Eagle]

I raced a dragon boat that was training one time - upon entering into Squamish after a DW run.  Was neck and neck for a short sprint on the SIC Bullet 14V2.  But was totally gassed.

But great result for the Naish crew!